Arcanum
by Scherzo Barouque
Summary: It all began with a pendant.  A ShikixRima tale of espionage. AU
1. Act I

**Arcanum**

; _a tale of espionage._

* * *

_**Act I.**_

"_Just water, please."_

"_Yes…will there be anything else, sir?"_

"_...Not right now."_

_La Scene _was the classiest, costliest restaurant in the city. Resting on the roof of a skyscraper, its affluent patrons dined on the finest of finest by the metropolis skyline, shelling out hefty sums of money for each exquisite serving of salad, dessert, and wine.

Have a closer look.

There sits a cluster of giggly supermodels near the entrance, all clad in lavish silk gowns that clung seamlessly to their slender forms. Tabloid photographers clamor near the table, eager to capture negatives of the Fifty-third _Court Exquisias_ Anniversary Dinner, but are shooed away by the manager when the other customers start to complain about the racket.

No one paid particular attention to the young man in the corner, his soft features dimly lit by the candlelight. He played with his fork in a seemingly bored manner.

"Your water, sir," a waiter said, lifting a clear glass from his tray and setting it onto the fine white linen. "Are you sure that's all you need?"

The man gave an impatient nod. The waiter bowed and backed away to the kitchens, leaving him to silence.

"_For the moment,"_ he said softly, the whisper barely perceptible over the din of voices. He threw down a dollar at the table as the supermodels left, slipping out of the restaurant unseen.

_Don't let anyone see you, know you; any living creature, any moving being, any entity that breathes. Everything you are is at stake._

_Live in the shadows._

He entered the restaurant as a well-groomed, stiff-looking brunette in a navy tuxedo suit. He left the establishment as a roguishly handsome blond in a leather jacket and tight denims.

Glancing to his right, he caught sight of his target entering an exclusive nightclub with the rest of her supermodel friends. A small sneer made its way to his face as he followed her, flashing a forged identity card when he was denied entrance by the guard.

_Too easy._

He gave a discreet glance behind, checking that nobody was following him, and strutted easily into the scene. _She _was already on the dance floor. He grimaced lightly. _Here comes the part I hate the most._

_**Target: Isabella Z., Italian supermodel. **_

The dark-haired beauty lowered her eyelashes seductively at the stranger who had begun dancing with her, his hands running over her waist and spine. She was feeling lightheaded, no doubt due to the alcohol she had consumed earlier, and decided; what could dancing with this bold, steamy fellow hurt? Her colleagues were all half-leering at him, half-scowling at her.

The music consumed her in its fire. She could care less about the photo shoot she had planned for the following morning – all thought of it was buried somewhere in the depths of her mind. She barely noticed as the blond lad led her out of the club, back to her hotel.

It never occurred to her _how _he knew where her rooms were. She didn't care. At the moment, the only thought that went through her head was: _Bed. You, me, now._

It was as if the stranger could hear her thoughts. He threw her onto the bed and straddled her hips, snapping her slightly out of her drunken stupor. She squinted in the dark. The black around her had slowly faded to grey, and now she could make out his facial features, alive in the moonlight that seeped through her balcony window.

A pair of plump and feminine lips resided on his face. _Huh?_ Her eyes traveled higher. He had a rather small nose, too. That was strange. She was sure that it had been…longer.

His eyes were a clear, icy, aching hue of blue. But weren't they hazel, back at the club? And the golden hair suddenly was so _long…_

When was _he _a _she?_

The stranger smiled wickedly at her as she tried to process the newfound information. "Sorry to break it to you, _darling_," the blonde purred dangerously, "But I'm not interested in _females_."

Her heart pumped furiously in her chest in realization. _**Shit. Shit. Shit. They warned me about this. How could I forget?!**_

_**I am so fucking screwed.**_

What would Isabella Zabina's fans say if they knew her last thoughts? She would never know. The funeral was held within a week, and many came to mourn the death of one of the most beautiful women on Earth. They never found her body.

What was encased within the diamond casket was naught but a cleanly severed hand and a still, blood-encrusted heart.

* * *

_Isabella Reilen Zabina_

_1985-2005_

_Your beauty continues to touch the hearts of the people_

"…_Your beauty continues to touch the hearts of the people?_ Bah!" a scornful voice broke through the silent cemetery. "Even in death, she is as vain and conceited as she was alive." The voice paused briefly, before picking up again, this time in quieter, caressing tones. "You have done me a great favor, by getting rid of the _filth_ who took what was rightfully mine."

The second person remained in silence, face hidden behind a hood.

"This locket has been in my family for centuries," the oblivious woman continued, holding out a sapphire-encrusted pendant on a rusty golden chain. "It has been passed down from mother to daughter for as long as anyone can remember. I inherited it upon my mother's death. Isabella, my…" she spat out the next word with distaste, "_cousin_, tricked me into lending her the locket, and she stole away with it!" A sneer marred her delicate features. "Well? Aren't you going to say anything?"

"…Any last words?"

"What?"

"I have a grenade bomb hidden on my body," the second person, a woman, said coldly. "You have exactly five more seconds to live. Hand over the locket or you die."

"Five."

"Now…you can't possibly be serious, can you?" The first woman said nervously, clutching the locket close to her chest. "I paid you money, didn't I?"

"_You have three more seconds_. Give me the locket."

"You can't! Y…you'll draw too much attention!" She shouted shakily, but with confidence in her eyes. Surely this _killer _before her won't risk something like that?

There was a pause in the countdown. _One._ "…Surely you understand that I am more than capable of using other methods to kill you?" The growing horror in her prey's eyes made her feel powerful.

Triumph.

"_Zero_. No more time now, Madame!" She lifted the hood off her head and smiled toothily, her grin widening as the lady before her let out a loud wail of despair. "No more last words."

No one heard her screams. Her body was found two days later by a couple visiting the graves of their children. Autopsy revealed that blood was, curiously, completely absent Madame Elisabeth's corpse. A few people suggested that it was a vampire who killed her, but the theory was dismissed immediately due to its 'lack of credibility'.

When it was disclosed that the deceased Madame was allergic to wasp stings, the puncture wounds on her neck were dismissed just as that.

After all, how many were willing to believe that vampires truly existed?

* * *

"Let me get this straight. You stalked the target, cross-dressed, danced provocatively with the _female _target, made her believe you were willing to have sex with her, and _then _you killed her?" Her boss demanded, his thin eyebrows raised. "Then after retrieving the locket you could have just _stolen _from her, you _**sold **__it _to her cousin for five grand, and then you sucked the brains out of the kind, wealthy soul?"

"Blood, sir, not brains."

"Why?" He laced his fingers together, looking straight into her eyes. "Why go through so much trouble, when you could have just resorted to thievery?"

"Sometimes I think you forget who I am, sir," she replied simply, "I am a vampire. I work for this corporation as an undercover agent. I get paid a pitifully low salary every month. I need money and blood."

He winced. "Er. Right. Well, the money issue is solved by your brilliant intellect and wiles anyway, so there's no need to complain about it…" He cleared his throat. "No matter, I suppose. You have succeeded in retrieving the _Arcanum Pendante_, and therefore have completed your mission successfully. However troublesome the procedure you went through was," he added as an afterthought, earning himself a glare.

"The next mission, _sir_?" Even the most socially incompetent person in the world couldn't miss the venomously saccharine way she addressed her superior. He quailed slightly in his seat before regaining his composure. Slightly.

"Toya Rima," he addressed the vampire seriously, "Your next mission is to infiltrate the heavily-warded, top-secret library in our, ah, _rival corporation's _base. Bring back a book called '_Fishing for Idiots_'."

He barely managed to avoid the beam of potentially fatal light, which hit the portrait behind his head instead. Cautiously brushing away the splinters on his chair, he resumed his original position, scowling at his 'employee'.

"Christ, can't take a joke around here, can we...okay, okay, okay," he raised his hands up meekly as Rima twirled her laser pointer threateningly in his general direction. "The book you're getting is called '_Arcanum Memoirs_'. Do your best, don't screw up, don't get killed, don't lose the book...you know the drill. Now get out of my office, Toya, before I decide to replace you with someone _nicer_."

"My pleasure."

"Oh, and…Toya?" He called out after her, "You're paying for the replacement portrait." Then he ducked cleanly behind his desk of infallible sturdiness as he heard the door unhinge from its frame and slam into his priceless laptop.

_Aw crap…_

* * *

**Author's Note**: Ello all! I'm back! And without another chapter for Cerulean Palace lol. Hope you guys won't maim me too bad…Eek. I had loads of fun writing this chapter. The boss you see here is someone you know from the canon setting. Shiki isn't in this chapter, but he'll appear…very soon.

So tell me what you think! Review:D


	2. Interlude

**Arcanum**

**Interlude**

* * *

"**WHAT?!**"Everyone within a fifty-mile radius of the office winced reflexively at the shriek.

Their boss was livid.

"What do you mean that it was retrieved by another party?!" The feminine voice continued. "You were _supposed _to ensure that the locket would fall into our hands!!" There was a loud crash that sounded rather like a porcelain vase shattering. **"WHERE IS IT NOW?!"**

At that moment, an outsider might've expected anyone being questioned in such a manner to reply meekly and perhaps even shed a few anxious tears. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depends on your way of looking), Shiki Senri was not just anyone, but a (rather weathered) man who had endured his senior's ire for a good half of his life.

(It wasn't that he was incompetent. Rather, it was the situations that fate threw him in that _made _him look incompetent.

Now was such a situation.)

"It is with Hanabusa Aido," he replied with ease befitting of a man such as himself. "Although we have every reason to believe that he does not know how to use the artifact, we also have more than every reason to believe that he has dispatched someone to retrieve the solution to his current predicament."

His senior wasn't very satisfied by his offhand answer. Oh, goodness, did her eyes just turn _red?_

This was a vampire in front of him, he reminded himself. She was, at her best, a sultry enchantress who captivated with a glance and could make the most morbid of crimes appear enthralling. At her worst, she was more splendid than the amber skies of sundown, and even more ruthless than her never-ending splendor, as she was now. Her eyes flashed amid ever-changing intervals of jades and navies and maroons.

"You will get it!" she sounded increasingly incensed, an emergent tempest of her feisty disposition. "You have to do this, Shiki." She wound her fingers around a champagne glass sitting on her desk, in a motion that alarmed him a little.

He sighed, tapping his foot impatiently against the marble tiles. "Not on my life; they will never get their hands on the memoirs. I can swear that it will never happen."

"Then are you capable of retrieving the locket?" the blonde challenged. "I will be forced to remove you from the ranks if you screw this up _yet again_."

Shiki rolled his eyes.

"Whatever."

He never managed to avoid the champagne glass speeding in his (general) direction.

* * *

"Yow…fuck!" Aido cursed lightly, brushing the bits and pieces of what once was his laptop off his desk. "That Toya had better be grateful that I backed-up everything in there." He paved his way through the wreckage. "Damn it, she'd _better _be paying for the damage!"

"With that puny paycheck of hers?"

Aido whipped his body away from the smoking debris, alarmed, and in his haste, he drove his palm against a sharp splinter.

"**FUCK!"**

"You seem to be doing well," Akatsuki remarked wryly, appearing in front of the doorframe. He assessed the damage done to the office. "Ouch. You've got issues with that employee of yours?"

"**AKATSUKI, SHUT UP."**

"The Souen facility already has our motives figured out," Akatsuki continued, ignoring his chagrined cousin. "They are advancing towards us." He smiled grimly. "The pendant is not safe, even here; Toya should keep it on her at all times."

A hiss escaped from Aido's mouth. The platinum chain gathered in his hand glinted at odd, rusted angles, reflecting light where there was none –

"Then let's pray that she _can_ keep it on her at all times," Aido breathed, "Even if her clothes are torn off."

* * *

_Copenhagen, Denmark_

"P-Pardon me, sir," a young girl asked, her wispy blonde hair flying around her face. "Could you tell me where the Eriksen Tavern is? I'm quite lost." She rubbed her hands sheepishly. The sir in question stared oddly at her.

"Eriksen Tavern?" He repeated. "It's 'round that corner behind you. You just passed it, I think. Are you looking for someone–"

The girl was gone.

* * *

**End Interlude**

I'm so sorry. I promise the actual next chapter will be up soon. Er. REALLY!...


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